


bones

by CorvidFeathers



Series: kill your heroes [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Complicated Grief, Gen, Guilt, Mentors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 15:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18034553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorvidFeathers/pseuds/CorvidFeathers
Summary: Kynan returns to the Isle of Glass, to put his time with Ripley to rest.





	bones

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this piece two years ago (almost exactly, wow) as something that was first intended to be part of a chapter, then intended to be the conclusion of my longfic kill your heroes. Sadly, I never finished the middle of the longfic, but I still like this vignette, and I think it stands on its own fairly well.
> 
> content warning for death/discussion of the circumstances of Ripley's

The Island of Glass was quiet.

The only sound that met Kynan’s ears was the crunch and scrape of glass under his shoes and the sound of the surf. This far into the dead forest, the waves were muffled into a low thump, a pulse beating through the still space.  He made his way through the groves of petrified trees, frozen in place, unyielding and implacable in the face of the wind.

It took him some time to find the place he was looking for.  Most of what he remembered from his last trek into the island was the weight of the dagger at his belt, and the nervous patter of his heart against his ribs, painful and excited all at once.  The rest was muddled by all that had come after; those few moments of adrenaline, and what they had cost. He wandered without direction for a time, losing sight of the scant indications of a trail that had guided him.

Then the breeze brought the rustle of leaves to his ears.

Kynan stepped out into a clearing.  The ground dipped down pit; the gunpowder scars on the earth had been smoothed away by time, and the handfuls of vegetation that grew on the island had begun to reclaim the slopes.

Close to the center of the shallow pit, one lone, living tree had taken root.  It stood about ten or twelve feet tall, and its branches spread out to reach towards the sky, swaying slightly in the wind.   A little bastion of life amidst the petrified groves.

Tangled in the roots were sun-bleached bones.

Kynan stood there looking at it for a time, dread settling like a stone in his chest.  At least, he stepped closer.

Time and the growth of the tree had obscured the form of the skeleton, dismantling it.  At a closer look, Kynan could see ribs scattered at the base of the tree; the sapling had sprung up through the ribcage of the skeleton, and grown outwards from there, crushing it.  The winds and movement of the glass had partially covered up the bones, making it hard to tell that it had once been a full- or nearly full- skeletons, but Kynan knew it was.

The sunlight filtered through the leaves overhead, giving this section of ground a warmer cast than the rest of the island.  This small patch of earth felt somehow separate from the stillness of the rest of the island, in a way that made a shiver crawl down the back of Kynan’s spine.  It felt wrong.

A partially-buried skull grinned up at him from a crook of tree roots.

The branches shifted overhead, making shadows played over the bones.  For a moment, the sunlight illuminated the visible eye socket, almost seeming to give it a light of its own.  A pale, cold light.

Kynan froze, staring at the skull.  Meeting its gaze, he thought, and then shook the notion away.  He forced himself to kneel down. Unwilling to touch the bones, he unsheathed one of his daggers, and used it to shift away the glass and earth around the skull, and then pry it up to the surface.  Something stuck, and then snapping; the skull rolled out of the crook of roots trailing a broken arrow. The fletched tail had already decayed, leaving just a broken shaft hanging from a partially-crushed eyesocket.

Kynan shut his eyes and took a deep breath, then laughed.  How much violence had he seen? Ridiculous, that he was getting squeamish at a set of long dead bones.  

But he remembered, now.  He could remember the sound of the arrows tearing through flesh and breaking bone; the horrible, broken-off scream, more animal than human.  

The skull had rolled over to reveal the gaping hole the back of it.  Kynan took another breath and reached out to pick it up, half-afraid of what would happen when he touched it.  

No phantoms rose from the earth; no black smoke poured from the half-crushed eyesocket; no voice rang out in accusation.  There was nothing but the rustle of the branches above and the distance roar of the sea. The skull was nothing more than another dead fragment of the dead island, forgotten and still.  Lifeless.

Kynan put the skull back up on the crook of roots, suddenly feeling very foolish.  What had he expected? He couldn’t exactly say. It wasn’t forgiveness. No, he couldn’t regret the decision he had made; it had been the right decision, after all.  He had stepped back onto the right path after being led astray.

No, he didn’t want forgiveness from the bones of a murderer.

Still, he could not forget the Isle of Glass.  It didn’t haunt him, not after so long, but it lingered, clinging to his memories.  Every once and a while he would awake from a nightmare of blood on glass and Whisper in his hands and pale, pale eyes staring at him.

If he was haunted by anything, it was her.  He had forgiven himself; it had been a long, painful road, but he had.  Or at least he had come the closest he ever would to forgiving himself. But he couldn’t forget that last moment, the instant when she had realized he had done what he promised he never had.  He had turned traitor.

For all the right reasons.  Ripley had been a monster. He didn’t want her forgiveness.

So why was he here?  Did he expect some sort of absolution?  From what? From some unburied bones and the angry shade of the woman he had betrayed?

If that was what he came for, it wasn’t here.  Perhaps Ripley had been pulled to whatever realm of shadows and pain the one she had bound herself to resided in; perhaps her soul had suffered the same fate as her body, picked apart thread by thread and scattered until almost nothing resembling a human being remained.  It was a fitting fate for her.

He could probably get answer to that if he really wanted.  There were any number of people he was acquainted who knew those sorts of things, and knew how to find answers.  But it wasn’t something he liked to let himself think about. He didn’t want to waste his time worrying about Doctor Anna Ripley, when there was good that could be done.

He sat down at the base of the tree, careful not to disturb any of the bones any more than he already had, and turned his face up to the branches of the tree above him.  The leaf-filtered sunlight warmed his face, counteracting the chill of the breeze. The leaves whispered in the wind. Around the tree, the island stayed still and silent.  In the distance, the ocean crashed and murmured against the beach.

“I forgave myself, you know,” he said.  “I know that would make you angry. You probably hoped that, if nothing else, you had made me into a tool that only you could use.  Something that would destroy anyone else.” He took a breath. “I’ve done far more for others than I ever did for you.”

It was almost funny; it seemed like that was a recurring theme for all the tools Ripley built for her purposes.  Her pistol, Animus, Kynan… All had gone on to do good in the hands of others. The same couldn’t be said for all of the other guns Ripley built, but Kynan had done his best to minimize that damage.

Easier to think of it that way.  He had been a tool in Ripley’s hands.  He had allowed her to shape his worldview.  She had capitalized on the opportunity, as she always did.  There had never been anything between them but her convenience and his naivete.  

That fit with everything he knew about Ripley; everything he had heard about since her death, of the cruelties she had visited upon the world.

But there was always that lingering doubt.  It rested in those last moments, and in a dozen moments in between.

“Sometimes I wish I could forget you,” he said to the still space.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're interested in more of what I wrote about Ripley mentoring/manipulating Kynan, check out kill your heroes, or one of the other pieces of what was going to be more of its later-chapter content I'll be posting in the next few days.


End file.
